Zaw Thet Htwe, a Myanmar newspaper editor condemned to death...

Zaw Thet Htwe, a Myanmar newspaper editor condemned to death after being accused of plotting bomb attacks, was among the latest batch of prisoners freed by the military government, opposition sources said. They said Zaw Thet Htwe, editor of the popular sports journal "First Eleven", and at least 20 political prisoners were among the more than 5,000 freed from jail in the last week, the latest of several batches of releases over a period of two months. 
Among them were about a dozen members of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, the sources said. She remained under house arrest in Yangon, as she had for much of the last 15 years. Zaw Thet Htwe was sentenced to death by a special court in November 2003, accused of plotting bomb attacks in Yangon and other cities. The International Labour Organisation accused the authorities of using the charge of high treason to mask his real offence - reporting human rights abuses to the United Nations body. His sentence was later reduced to two years. The mass release programme began in November, soon after military intelligence chief General Khin Nyunt was ousted as prime minister by junta strongman Than Shwe. When the releases started, the junta said it was freeing people who had been detained "inapropriately" by Khin Nyunt's military intelligence apparatus.